Posted
by
timothyon Thursday July 18, 2013 @11:31AM
from the zipping-along dept.

pacopico writes "Telsa Motors has started churning out 500 of its all electric Model S sedans per week. Bloomberg Businessweek just did a cover story about the company, suggesting that Tesla is becoming more than just a fad of rich folks in California. According to the story, 75 percent of Tesla's sales now come from outside of California, and the company appears poised to raise its sales forecasts for the year. There's a lot of talk about Tesla's history and why it survived when Fisker and Better Place failed too."

I got the impression "iPhone" was used deliberately. He's making a comparison to another product where others already existed in the space, but where some company managed to package it in a way that somehow caught the imagination of non-technical users and became wildly popular.

After the battery-pack demonstration, Tesla’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, can barely contain himself as he talks about the design of the Model S. “It’s like the leap of faith Apple (AAPL) took with the iPhone,” he says, explaining why the car has a touchscreen instead of the usual physical buttons. “There’s a cleanliness to the interior. The screen is the hero. We are in the midst of that transition toward a new way of thinking. For me, it’s that iPhone moment.”

When I was at the Tesla service center one of the engineers there basically told me the same thing. From what I have been able to find, the batteries should be good for 3000 charge/discharge cycles, over 600,000 miles. At that point they will still have 70% of their capacity and by then new batteries should be a lot cheaper and have higher capacity.

For all the whining and moaning about rich people, that seems to be how society advances often. A rich person's fad then becomes a commodity.

Yeah... but I mean to call the Model S no longer a rich person's fad is stretching it. Their MSRPs [teslamotors.com] for a 60 kWh car is $62,400. $72,400 for an 85 kWh and $87,400 for the 85 kWh with upgraded features. Is this really affordable? I thought I was living a pretty average lifestyle but I spent $6,600 on my current car... Of course, if you're calling it the iPhone in that everyone else is buying it and I'm laughing at how much money they're spending on phones then, yes, it could be called the iPhone. Still very much a rich person's car though.

According to this article from 2012 [autoblog.com], the average purchase price of a new car was $30,748 and increasing.

Seeing as that's about half the MSRP, I suppose it's not totally out of reach.

Personally I have no idea why people spend this kind of money on a car. My last brand new car (I don't usually buy brand new, but they had a lot of incentives) was about $16k (cdn), and I considered that a lot. A car is not an investment.....

Personally I have no idea why people spend this kind of money on a car.

It's like the difference between cafeteria food and a nice restaurant. Sure, both get the job done, but spending more buys you a better experience (okay, not always, but let's not get nit-picky). Some people want a little more luxury, more features, etc, and if they can afford it, then why not? Leather heated seats sure are nice in the winter:)

And I'm not arguing "if you can afford it", but the majority of people cannot, and when they look at their "needed $500/mo car expense" and then wonder why they are having trouble making ends meet, it's ridiculous.

"At introduction, a PC with 64 kB of RAM and a single 5.25-inch floppy drive and monitor sold for US $3,005 ($ 7,588 in today's dollars)"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC [wikipedia.org]

Clearly it was far too expensive for most consumers people to afford. But it led to an industry in which ever better PCs became ever cheaper.

Whilst that won't be as dramatic with electric cars, they will certainly reduce in price over the years to become comparable with ICE. And as the price of fossil fuels continues to rise, EVs will become better value over their whole lifetimes even quicker.

A $500/mo car payment is not a requirement, that is all I'm getting at. If you can afford a $60k car, then you should be able to afford to pay for it with cash. And, you should have enough money that you don't care if the car gets scratched, or otherwise damaged, because you can easily replace it.

I bought a 2012 VW Jetta TDI brand new off the showroom floor last year; every option except the nav system ('cuz I'm not stupid) - leather, heated seats, premium Fender stereo system, the works. The damn thing gets 40-60 MPG, has mountains of torque (handy here on the Ozark Plateau, which isn't very plateau at all), and is generally a damn nice way to get around.

All for less than $30K.

Personally I have no idea why people spend this kind of money on a car.

Some people want a little more luxury, more features, etc, and if they can afford it, then why not?

Personally I have no idea why people spend this kind of money on a car. My last brand new car (I don't usually buy brand new, but they had a lot of incentives) was about $16k (cdn), and I considered that a lot. A car is not an investment.....

Neither is a computer, but if you count the total I've used without any significant ROI to show for it, well... it basically depends how much you need and want to use it. I have a friend who spent quite a lot of money on his car, but he also has a fairly long daily commute (and most of it driving not just limping in a queue), the family has two cabins who are both a few hours away, the car is the de facto way to visit friends and family and in general he likes to drive and can go on road trips and such. If

I'm not arguing against using money to enjoy life; I am a strong supporter of dying with $0 to your name.

That said, it's become common in North American lifestyle that a $500/mo car expense is both expected, and normal, and people take it on in lieu of saving for retirement, or having a disposable income for things they want (and then use credit to get those things anyways).

As I said in an above post, if you truly can afford a $60k car, then you can afford to pay cash for it upfront, and not care about it,

Of course it is. Only the idiots that only count the sell price as the return on that investment say this. It is a tool that you use to get from place to place often in order to make or save more money that you possibly could without it. A car gives me the flexibility to generate large amounts of income that would not be possible otherwise.

I thought I was living a pretty average lifestyle but I spent $6,600 on my current ca

Your current car was not bought new. Either that, or your current car is a motor scooter or a low end motorcycle.

My current car was bought new, and while it wasn't $60,000, it is a model whose top trim level is not far from that new. Most people don't have $60,000 cash lying about, but they use credit to buy stuff like that. Believe it or not, despite the banking crash in the US some of us still have good credit.

60 kWh car is $62,400. $72,400 for an 85 kWh and $87,400 with upgraded features

Have you seen what a Lexus LS Hybrid costs? It's easy to walk out of an Acura dealer with a mass produced gasoline vehicle for $60K. Tesla is right in there at a reasonable price (US wages relative to the international market are a separate issue). Consider some places in the US you can buy a tiny ranch for $600K and average annual salaries are $130K or so, and a $60K car isn't outside of the realm of typical.

I thought I was living a pretty average lifestyle but I spent $6,600 on my current car

Nah, you're pretty far to the low side there. 75% of car sales are used, at about $9K on average. 25% of car sales are new, with the latest average at $31K. That puts the overall average at $14.5K, which puts you at, what, the 20th percentile or so?

When considered against the cars the Model S is competing with-- Porsche Panamera; BMW M5, Audi A7 (all of which are $70K+ cars)... it's absolutely affordable.

Tesla is planning a higher volume, lower priced car code named "BlueStar", which is to be similar in size as a BMW 3-series and should start around $35K, but it's going to take a few years for them to tool up the production scale.

Let's look at the basic 85 kWh model, which comes with free charging and such. $72,400. That works out to $1,207/month over 5 years. Ouch, no kidding. Let's say that our theoretical 'middle class' person is:A: Car focused; they're going to be driving the 'best' car they can get no matter what, even if it impacts their savings/housing. Nobody ever said everybody 'middle class' is 100% financially logical/responsible.B: Has access to free electricity for charging(work, supercharger stations, whatever)C: Itemizes on taxes already.D: Drives an average amount of distance per year, but no trips outside of a Tesla's range.

Please note that I'm trying to be favorable to Tesla in this case, in order to see how low it could realistically go.1. $72,400 minus the federal rebate of 7,500 becomes $64,9002. 15k miles/year@20mpg(nasty city driver, best case for electric, worst for gasoline), 750 gallons@$4 = $3k/year. $15k in fuel savings. $49.9k left

Picking on GM, the Cadillac CTS-V Sedan is more expensive(3.9 v 4.2 for 0-60), and the XTS and CTS Sport are close. BMW 7 Series are uniformly $25k+ more expensive. You need to drop to the 5 series to reach that price point.

It's not even to middle-middle class yet, but I'd say it's moved from 'rich' people to 'upper-middle'.

You do know that a Model T cost $850 in 1909 which for an average worker was around 2 to 4 times their average income. Even at 60k the Model S is around 4x that of a non-tipped worker making no more than Federal minimum wage (and more than 86% of people are at or above this income level). So a Model S is really no more expensive for a minimum wage worker than a Model T was for the low-end average income of a 1909 worker.. Prices came down on the Model T with increased sales volume just as prices will go down on Tesla cars if growth continues and they sell more volume.

Is that, according to Bob Lutz, it pushed Chevy to make the far more practical Volt. I've had one for 2 years, and love it, it wasn't sooo pricey, and you could actually get one the day you wrote the check.

In the case of a full EV like a Model S, you're also paying for all the fluids, belts, parts changes, spark plugs, oil, oil filters, starters, alternators, clutches, hoses, wires, brakes (if you know what you're doing), rotors, 12V batteries, mufflers, catalytic converters, etc. and all the associated labor. People don't actually get how expensive it is to actually maintain a gas vehicle, especially as it ages.
Also, in the case of the model S, it is priced in the same range as the cars it competes with. People spending that much on a car are already not very concerned about the price.

Just about every morning on my way to work, I see two of the Tesla Model S on the road. I commute between Palm Beach Gardens and Jupiter, Florida. That's less than a 20-minute commute.

If you're looking for a conversation starter at the country club or marina, a BMW, Mercedes or even a Bentley isn't going to work nearly as well as a Tesla.

While $65,000 to $75,000 seems like a lot for a car (I cringe at paying half that), there are just as many cars in that price range rolling in Palm Beach County that aren't nearly as exotic or as head-turning as the Tesla. I pass dozens of $65k+ cars on the way to work and it isn't unusual to see $100k+ cars either. Those are mostly background noise because they are so common.

"...Franz von Holzhausen, can barely contain himself as he talks about the design of the Model S. “It’s like the leap of faith Apple (AAPL) took with the iPhone,” he says, explaining why the car has a touchscreen instead of the usual physical buttons."

This is monumentally wrong. Touch screens succeed on a phone because a phone is a portable device and the touch screen is lighter and smaller. Physical controls are preferable for humans because they model the physical world to which we've adapted. In a car, you need to use the controls without taking your eyes off the road. This means location by feel is important. A touch screen can't provide that.

It seems the entire design world has this backwards, include appliance manufacturers. I hate the buttons on my oven.

Have you actually seen the Tesla dashboard? It has physical controls as well. You don't have to take your eyes off the road to operate it. The touchscreen is in addition to physical controls, not instead of.

Looking at the picture in the Businessweek article, there appears to be one small button on either side of the screen (the left one is for hazard lights, I can't tell what the right one is) and nothing else.

Physical controls are preferable for humans because they model the physical world to which we've adapted.

For the younger generations, this isn't true anymore. People who've had a smartphone since their youth are more used to touchscreens. Going back to buttons is about as difficult as the transition to touchscreens was.

What he says about taking your eyes off the road is not correct. When driving, the key thing is to not be focused on anything. That includes the road, the car in front of you, your phone, controls, etc. Instead, you want to be alert, which is the opposite of focused. Your eyes should be constantly moving - look at the road, the car in front of you, traffic in front of that car, your mirrors, your gauges, off into the distance, etc.

As long as the touch screen interface is well designed it will be no more

After a couple of years of using OS/2 computers, I finally got a Windows 3.1 computer. And oh lord I'm mildly amused! It is single handedly not quite the worst OS there has ever been so far. Far less troubles with fragmentation and, well, most just fragmentation and not lagging in the same areas. Windows 3.1 will somewhat at the medium-high end of this generation, any day now.

I live in Redmond, and I see more Tesla Ses driving around than people holding a Windows Phone 8... even with MS giving WP8 to all its employees for free. Do see a fair number of their tablet thing, though.

The (too few) WP8 product demos I've seen did look pretty good, though. Things could have been different had it come out a few years ago back when WebOS / Maemo were contenders.

It does blend, as well as dice and puree! It makes exciting Julienne Fries! It's the only kitchen gadget you will ever need! Order now and get a second one for only additional shipping and handling!! Offer not available in any store!! OMG why didnt OP post the 800 number where operators are standing by before the offer expires!!!

Because at one point in the history of technology there came a point when the sales of the iPhone absolutely skyrocketed and changed Apple as a company and it's position in the Consumer Electronics Industry, as well as the industry and customer expectations to a large degree.

By drawing an analogy to that moment, the author is suggesting that Tesla Motors is about to have an equally significant effect on the motoring industry as a whole, and people's expectations of cars.

No Tesla car is worthy of his name without it being able to generate 5 meter long arcs of electricity on demand.

Think if it... as a project.

Get one of these cars, wire a transformer into it and place a couple electrodes on the hood. While you are waiting at lights you could press a button and make arcs dance across the hood of your car and impress the homeboys with their pitiful flatulent exhausts and audio with something massively cool.

You could also work it into vehicle protection. (Please be neat and carry a whisk broom to sweep away the dust of those who attempted to break in.)

However, I'd be VERY interested if they could somehow start making the Tesla Roadster again, but this time at a price-point nearer that of a Corvette. I'd be ALL over that....a performance electric car that isn't fugly.

The energy density of gasoline is a huge factor when considering the cost of transport. The IT equivalent is the old story about the bandwidth of a stationwagon of data tapes travelling down the highway.

When dealing with transport of energy, the density matters, and chemical energy density is hard to beat.

The final figure is about 6% transmission loss in the United States overall, a shockingly easy to derive figure. The total loss is the total amount produced by the industry minus the total amount delivered by the industry.

That's a bit disingenuous. You can't pick out a single stage of the process and compare that while ignoring everything else if you want an honest assessment of the efficiency.

Let's make up an example. Let's say you have a source of fuel, a power plant that can burn that fuel, a testing ground that's 100 miles further away from the fuel source than the power plant, and two vehicles that can utilize the fuel. Internal combustion cars are generally about 15% efficient. Electric engine cars are 85-90% efficient. Fossil fuel power plants are about 33% efficient. Your transmission numbers are 99.86% for gasoline and 99.25% for electricity over 100 miles.

So over a distance of 100 miles Electric cars are still almost twice as efficient, even with the extra losses in transmission. (Admittedly this is for "normal" internal combustion cars, i don't have the figures to hand for the average efficiency of hybrid cars.)

Doing a little quick math (it's been forever since i've had to solve for a variable, so i'm just plugging it into a spreadsheet) it looks like the break-even point is about 10,700 miles. So if the distance from the fuel source was over 10,700 miles, you'd be better shipping the fuel to the car rather than converting it to electricity on-site and transmitting it to the destination. Though obviously over such an extreme distance a lot of other factors would come into play and overwhelm the simple equation.

There may be more accurate numbers out there, so the exact outcome might differ, it's clear that better efficiency in just a single stage of the operation does not dictate an overall higher efficiency.

If the truck is driving back empty, they should fire their logistics guy.

The problem with this is that because it's a hazardous flammable and fairly poisonous liquid substance you're transporting it in a tanker designed for hydrocarbon fuel, not a general transport vehicle. You still need to get the trailer back to the refinery/distribution point to move more gasoline, but the selection of items that can go into the trailer is extremely limited - can't put food products in there, can't put potable water or drinking alcohol, etc... That's assuming any of this is produced at your distribution point.

Longer ranges it's piped or transported by railroad, but for ~100 mile final transport, they are stuck driving back with an empty trailer.

This is true, but the amount of coal energy production has been consistently declining [wikipedia.org] and renewable energy production rising for a number of years. The fact of the matter is that electricity can be generated in numerous ways, using an electric car gives (at least in some sense) a choice of where the energy comes from and therefore leaves open the door to improvements. Fossil fuel cars will always be powered by fossil fuels.

Tesla wanted to pump electricity into the atmosphere and harvest it with antennas on our homes. No way that could have led to any trouble, and of course it is an extremely efficient way to transmit electricity.

I think its an insult to call this Tesla motors. An insult to his once great name. These electric cars are just as poisonous to the environment as anything else but liberal idiots keep on keepin on.

I guess you are thinking about the electricity coming from dirty coal power plants or similar, but it doesn't have to. Electric cars are one part of the puzzle, cleaning up electric power generation at source another, it isn't either or, you should do both. This is absolutely possible at large scale with today's technology (see fx Germany). And as an added benefit you avoid the local pollution, big city smog is a significant health risk many places.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that using the term "liberal idiots" undermines the credibility of your technical argument. But I'll also invite you to post or cite actual data here rather than just ranting.

These electric cars are just as poisonous to the environment as anything else but liberal idiots keep on keepin on.

Really depends on when your power comes from. I live in British Columbia, where the majority of our electricity comes from Hydroelectricity - So the electric cars here have a very, very low carbon footprint. Ditto jurisdictions where power comes from wind, solar and fission.

"This doesn't solve all our problems all at once, therefore it's a pile of crap!" There is no magic bullet.As a side note, I am getting a bit sick and tired of the abuse of the words liberal and conservative and the totally wacko connotations they now posses thanks to people like you.

I'm sorry, I just don't care for battery cars, just like I don't care for iDevices -- perhaps the (dumb) analogy is more accurate than the author intended.

I've actually sat in a Tesla Model S at a electric vehicle show. I defy anyone to actually test drive one and claim that they "don't like battery cars". The Model S is obviously too pricey for most folks but it is an awesome car almost any way you care to measure it. It's fast, handles great, has range comparable to gas cars, looks nice, doesn't need gasoline, has a terrific interior and can even be recharged relatively quickly given the state of the art in recharge technology. Given it's range the recharge time problem is significantly mitigated. I'd buy one in a heartbeat if I had the money.

If the technology can be developed to get recharge times down to 5-10 minutes you had better start learning to like "battery cars" because that is really the only serious problem holding them back. Until we get to that point I think we're going to see a slow but steady migration through plug in hybrids. I've driven the Volt and the Ford Fusion Energi and I'm seriously considering buying one or the other. They're both genuinely good cars for reasonable prices (not cheap but competitive) and I can do much of my daily driving without needing to use gas.

The only real problem with battery cars is the battery. Where do used batteries go

For the most part, they don't go anywhere - just about every battery put into a hybrid or an all electric in the last decade is still out there in service.

As for what happens at their eventual end of life... these batteries are eminently recyclable. The nickel in a Prius battery is valuable, as is the cobalt and manganese in li-ion powered cars (chemistries vary). The lithium content itself isn't terribly valuable, but

What are you talking about? If you're talking about lead-acid batteries, they're plastic, lead + lead oxide and sulfuric acid. If you're talking about lithium-ion, there's plastic, lithium + whatever the particular chemistry uses and perhaps some electrolyte.

Oh, I don't doubt that it's a fine electric automobile, based on a Lotus Elise,

The Model S is not based on the Elise. The Tesla Roadster was but that no longer is in production. Try going to Tesla's web site before posting next time.

Personal prejudices and preferences aside, my biggest issue with electric cars is that you're really just shuffling the emissions around.

You're forgetting several important details. First is that you can power an electric vehicle with power from non-fossil fuel sources. Hydro, wind, solar, nuclear etc. You can actually reduce the emissions to a good approximation of zero. Second is that it is MUCH easier to control emission at the generating station than it is to try to do it on every tailpipe out there. Would you rather have one big filter or millions of small ones? Third is that the power efficiency of electric motors is significantly higher than for internal combustion engines. ICEs waste a huge amount of power in the form of heat. Fourth is that you have the option of powering an electric vehicle with fossil fuels that are potentially less polluting. Instead of coal you can power it with natural gas or even oil.

Until we get a point of 100% clean renewable energy, I'm not sure the trade-off is worth it.

So nothing is worth doing until it is perfect? That's a pretty tragically stupid argument.

What I find hilarious is that they think that electric vehicles are a new thing. They come with all kinds of excuses to overlook the fact that at the turn of the twentieth century electric automobiles were outselling internal combustion automobiles by a significant margin.

I wonder how electric cars compare to gasoline/diesel powered cars in terms of total energy consumption when you factor in the materials.

An example would be a Prius vs. Corolla. It seems to me that a lot more energy -- and other environmental impact -- goes into making a Prius due to the battery (lithium mining and battery manufacturing), more elaborate computers/controls (everything to do with chipmaking) electric motors (rare earth mining and processing).

Guess your not an engineer. Internal combustion engines are 30% efficient, Large power plant including transmission are are about 80% efficient, so even if the power plant burned gasoline, which they do not, a car running off the grid would be more then 2x as efficient.

Your also assuming that in the US we have not reached peak car. The industry is currently concerned we have. The amount of cars on the road is beginning to plateau.

Google 'state of charge union of concerned scientists' and you'll find a PDF document that is a study of an Electric Vehicles’ (EV) emissions and costs.
Page 37: "Over the lifetime of an EV, the owner can save more than 6,000 gallons of gasoline"
Page 17:"a typical midsize EV could save nearly $13,000."
Page 11:"There are no areas of the country where electric vehicles have higher global warming emissions than the average new gasoline vehicle."
Page 37:"Nearly half of Americans live in regions where

In ten years, can you convert your gasoline car to run on solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear power? You can with an electric car. They are not a panacea, but they do allow us to move away from a specific fuel dependency (and one which also doesn't compete with food).

I am looking at an Audi also; I find the A6 perfectly droolworthy. I did drive a Telsa yesterday which is now easily my favorite car after only 20 minutes (my boss has one). He points out that if you get the high-end, there is a 8 year warranty on the car, and all he has done so far (7,000 miles in) is rotate the tires. Cost? $10.They provided a garage charger and installed it at his house for free)

By the time you figure in 6 or 7 years of maintenance, gas, etc. on your Audi in Cali, you are not that far from what he paid upfront. Have the car charge automatically after midnight when the electric rates are low, and you begin to see the value. Over 8-10 years, buying a $60,000 car with gas prices shooting upwards, and replacing a zillion parts as they wear out, I will spend close to $87,000 on my car; my boss will only buy tires. It seems to boil down to whether you have the money upfront or not, the cars cost about the same.

No you don't. Just like the asshats who ride harley davidson motorcycles don't "need" to hear their motorcycles violating local noise ordinances. You might like it (no idea why) but you certainly don't need it. Speaking for myself I don't really want to hear your car go vroom either.

I'm somewhat mystified why people would a car that is any louder than it absolutely has to be. It's noise pollution, nothing more. Noise from a car is a by-product. People expect it because it has always been there but it does not make the vehicle perform any better. Personally I want a car that is absolutely silent and goes like stink. (and no there are no blind people crossing the road anywhere I drive)

As an owner of both a Toyota and a Tesla there is really no comparison at all. My toyota has sat in my driveway with a battery minder on it since I got my Tesla some months back and I'll likely add the fuel stabilizer additive soon. I don't forsee any major issues with my Tesla, especially since the drive train is much simpler with only a fraction of the moving parts. I also worked out the lifetime of the battery given my normal driving habits. It will outlast the life of the car by many years. While my Toy